This section is intended to provide a background or context to the invention disclosed below. The description herein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived, implemented or described. Therefore, unless otherwise explicitly indicated herein, what is described in this section is not prior art to the description in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
The following abbreviations that may be found in the specification and/or the drawing figures are defined as follows:
3GPP third generation partnership project
APN access point name
AS access stratum
DRX discontinuous reception
DT device trigger
eNB base station, evolved Node B (also, eNodeB)
E-UTRAN evolved UTRAN (LTE)
FDD frequency division duplex
GGSN gateway GPRS support node
GPRS general packet radio service
GSM global system for mobile communications
HLR home location register
ID identification
IMSI international mobile subscriber identity
LTE long term evolution
LTE-R LTE railways
MBMS multimedia broadcast/multimedia service
MBSFN multi-media broadcast over a single frequency network
MME mobility management entity
MMEC MME code
MTC machine-type communication
M2M machine-to-machine
PBP paging block periodicity
PCCPCH primary common control physical channel
PDCCH physical downlink control channel
PDN packet data network
PI page indicator
PICH paging indicator channel
PF paging frame
PMR public mobile radio
PO paging occasion
P-RNTI paging RNTI
RAN radio access network
RN radio network
RNTI radio network temporary identifier
RRC radio resource control
SACCH slow assisted control channel
SAE system architecture evolved
SCCPCH secondary common control physical channel
SGSN serving GPRS support node
SIB system information block
SFN system frame number
SMS short message service
S-TMSI SAE TMSI
TMSI temporary mobile subscriber entity
VGCS voice group call service
UE user equipment
UMTS universal mobile telecommunications system
U-RNTI UTRAN-RNTI
UTRAN universal terrestrial radio access network
User equipment (UE) originally were primarily wireless devices such as cellular phones. Now, UEs are used in railway systems for voice and data communications between, e.g., the driver, staff, and the control center and for train positioning, fleet management, remote diagnostics, and train control. LTE-R (long term evolution-railway) is being defined to further address bandwidth and other issues. UEs are also used for public mobile radio, which supports technologies such as group calling or instant calling (e.g., push-to-talk). Furthermore, there are UEs that support machine type communications (MTC), such as sensors that can provide information to a central facility as in the railway system. MTC communication also includes machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, where one “machine” such as a sensor communicates with another “machine” such as a controller. Many of these UEs are arranged in groups. For instance, certain types of sensors may be assigned to one group, or certain personnel could be assigned one group. Therefore, instead of having primarily point-to-point communications, modern wireless communications systems also have to support UEs that are arranged in groups.
As an example, the VGCS (voice group call service) enables a calling service subscriber or calling dispatcher to establish a voice group call to destination subscribers belonging to a predefined group call area and group ID (identification). Applications for voice group call services typically involve multiple group members in a small group call area, for which the VGCS should provide spectrum efficient solutions. The VGCS is applicable to, e.g., LTE-R and PMR.
Relative to MTC, for many M2M applications, there may be an interest to have a poll model for communications between MTC devices and the MTC server. This may be because the MTC user (i.e., a person using services provided by the MTC server) wants to be in control of communication from MTC devices, and does not allow MTC devices to randomly access the MTC server. Also, for applications where normally the MTC devices initiate communications, there may occasionally be a need for the MTC server to poll data from the MTC devices.
A primary technique for accessing groups of UEs is through group paging. It would be beneficial to provide group paging, e.g., while still allowing UEs the ability to reduce power.